Keep Your Mac in Top Shape With CleanMyMac X

A Mac’s combination of top-notch software and hardware means your laptop or desktop should provide years of service. But over time, whether you use your Mac for work or play, the computer accumulates digital trash.

Unneeded files take up precious storage spaced, which is especially an issue with the smaller SSDs found in most MacBooks. Apple still sells models with a paltry 128GB of local storage.

In addition, overall system speed and performance can take a hit for a number of different reasons over time. And there’s always the threat of malware.

If you want to keep your Mac in top shape with just a few clicks, there’s a great utility to take a look at: CleanMyMac X.

What Is CleanMyMac X?

CleanMyMac X is a utility suite that can clean up, optimize, and manage your Mac in four major categories. It finds and deletes unneeded files, detects and deletes malware, optimizes and speeds up your system, and manages apps.

Developer MacPaw’s suite has been around for a decade. And the latest version, CleanMyMac X, is a powerful way to tidy up your system. Let’s see what it offers.

Start With the Smart Scan

Easily the best feature of CleanMyMac X is Smart Scan. Instead of spending time looking through the app to accomplish all the different tasks, you can just open CleanMyMac X and hit Scan. The app will take care of the rest.

The scan combines three of the major parts of the app—Cleanup, Protection, and Speed—and will look at every portion of your Mac. If you’re using the Smart Scan for the first time, simply minimize CleanMyMac X and let the app do its work while you move onto other tasks.

When complete, you’ll see a notification and can open up the app to review the scan results. You’ll see the results grouped into the three major areas; click on each to see the details.

If there’s something in the results you don’t agree with, don’t worry. You have complete control over what files to delete for extra space, threats to remove, or the suggested steps to make your Mac run faster.

Spring Cleaning on Your Mac

Deleting unneeded files is a great way to bring new life to a Mac. After my first time using Smart Scan on my MacBook Pro, CleanMyMac X found 23GB of files that could safely be deleted. That makes a big difference, especially when you just have 256GB of built-in storage.

Some of the most typical types of files found by CleanMyMac X are:

• Cache and log files from the macOS system and apps.
• Language files from macOS and unused app localizations.
• If you use Xcode, junk from build information and the project index.
• Multiple versions of documents from Sketch, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

The app also scans for unnecessary data from both your Photo Library and iTunes, which you can delete without worry.

Anyone who receives large attachments from time to time will be happy to hear that app also scans for those documents. You can select any files that you don’t need or use.

CleanMyMac X Offers Much More

CleanMyMac X is for much more than just freeing up space on your Mac. The app also does a great job helping to wipe personal information from your machine, which is welcome as privacy has becomes more difficult on the internet.

The app can perform an extensive scan for any type of malicious software. That ranges from viruses to other problems like spyware, adware, and items that can compromise your privacy and personal information. After the scan, you can delete anything it found with just a click.

In the Privacy section, the app will find items like chat history, browsing history, cookies, downloads, and recent item lists that you can delete to make your machine even more private.

Another way CleanMyMac X improves your Mac is in the Speed section. It examines the system and gives you control of exactly what runs. You’re bound to find something not needed that will help free up valuable resources like RAM.

CleanMyMac X also offers a number of different maintenance scripts that can help make your Mac run faster.

Take Advantage of Space Lens

One of the newest additions to the CleanMyMac X is Space Lens. It’s a great way to help you visualize the storage on your Mac and manually examine and delete files you no longer need.

To start, select the hard drive you’d like to scan (this feature also works on external drives). After the scan completes, you’ll see a unique map of the drive’s storage represented as bubbles of different sizes. The larger a file or folder is, the bigger its bubble.

This makes is much easier to find large files that you might not need. After looking through Space Lens, you can take one last look at all the files you’ve selected before permanently deleting the data.

Always Accessible in the Menu Bar

Even when the app isn’t running, you can quickly access various CleanMyMac X features through the Menu Bar.

Just click the icon to open up an at-a-glance status update. It’s a great place to go when your Mac is running a bit slower than normal. With just a click, you can delete the Trash or free up RAM.

When you’re not connected to a power source, it will also show apps that are heavily consuming battery power. You can quit any of those with just a click. The dashboard even displays the CPU temperature and load, along with upload and download network traffic. For more info, try running a quick test to see the speed of the current internet speed.

If you sign into a Dropbox account, the menu will also show the amount of free storage left.

Get Started With CleanMyMac X

You can download CleanMyMac X from MacPaw now. The company offers two different ways to purchase.

A one-year subscription license for one Mac is $34.95. Meanwhile, a two-Mac license is $54.95. You can subscribe five Macs for $79.95.

If you prefer, you can instead make a one-time purchase of $89.95 for a single Mac. A two-Mac license is $134.95 while five Macs can use the app forever for $199.95. All purchases come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you’d like to see how the app works, give the free trial a shot first.

CleanMyMac X: An Indispensable Mac Utility

While it’s not something you’ll need to use every day, CleanMyMac X is a great utility for any Mac owner. Along with freeing up space on your hard drive, the utility will help run your Mac run faster, no matter its age. And that’s music to any Mac owner’s ears.

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